COVID-19: Centre's package not enough, say activists, academicians

A group of activists, policy analysts and academicians on Friday found fault with the Rs 1.7 lakh crore package announced by the Centre to deal with COVID-19 fallout, saying the measures fall short of what is needed to support the poor and prevent a deepening of the ongoing economic slowdown.

In a note released to media, they said the relief measures announced by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday were “highly inadequate”, as they claimed the measures announced to help rural poor and pensioners may not address their concerns.

They felt that the money being promised were very less and demanded higher allocation while highlighting that the increase in the wages of workers engaged in Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREGS) announced was nothing new but due to them.

They demanded safe transportation and passage to all the migrant labourers, who are attempting to reach their homes after the lock-down. No concrete measures for those who have been hit the hardest due to the lock-down have been announced, they said.

"It would have been appropriate to make such an announcement prior to a lock-down so that lakhs of migrant workers would not have panicked and travelled, creating distress and health hazards.

The package is wide-ranging in scope but falls short of what is needed to support the poor and to prevent a deepening of the ongoing economic slowdown," the group, which had released an appeal to the government with signature of 635 people prior to Sitharaman's announcement, said in their response. The appeal was signed by activists Aruna Roy, Nikhil Dey, Anjali Bharadwaj and Harsh Mander among others.

While welcoming the announcement of 5 kg of rice/wheat per person free for next three months and one kg pulse per family, they said it does not mention about families who are excluded from the Public Distribution System (PDS). "In the current scenario, the government should have made provisions to ensure doorstep delivery of ration to avoid overcrowding at the distribution centres but no such promise was made," they said.

Describing the increase from Rs 500 to Rs 1,000 for pension beneficiaries was "inadequate", they said every pension beneficiary must be provided Rs 1000 per month in advance for three months as done by states like Rajasthan and Kerala.

They also demanded that Jan Dhan Yojana (JDY) account holders should be paid at the daily wage rate of notified agricultural minimum wages of states for 26 days per month for the next three months instead of the announced Rs 500 per month for three months.

On the promise of providing an average Rs 2,000 extra per household through MNREGS, they said it was "misnomer", as the wage increase was a regular adjustment against inflation made every year and cannot be described as "additional resource" as Sitharaman claimed.

Emphasising that minimum wages are not still paid to MNREGS workers, they said these workers should be paid the minimum wage rate for every day of the lock-down. They also said social distancing norms for work under the scheme was "not pragmatic" as accessing and working in the scheme involves several processes with significant physical proximity.

With several migrant workers returning home from cities, they said many more rural residents will need work under MGNREGA over the next year. “In such extraordinary circumstances, the number of days of work per rural household should not be limited to 100 days per year," they said adding the scope of work under the scheme should be enlarged.

They said the Rs 1.7 lakh crore package is less than half of the Rs 3.75 lakh crore, which referred to an emergency cash relief of Rs 7,000 per household, required to fulfil the minimal “emergency measures” suggested in the appeal endorsed by 635 people. The appeal had also emphasised that access to any rights and entitlements should not depend on Aadhaar-based biometric systems owing to possible spread of infection through touch.